Jack Vance - Gaean Reach 01 (14 page)

Taking the binoculars, Elvo saw a long black articulated wagon of three segments, each with a notably tall mast and narrow sail: a vehicle intended for high speed and high capability into the wind. Five men rode the deck, hanging to the shrouds or crouched in the cockpit. They wore loose black pantaloons; their torsos were naked and showed the typical cream-brown Wind-runner color. Several wore red scarves to bind their hair. As they moved about the deck they displayed a peculiar jerking agility, which by some trick of association recalled to Elvo the fearsome man who had entered the inn three nights previously. So then: these were Srenki, men whose virtue was the excess of vice, who with leaden zest performed quintessential evil and so redeemed their fellows from turpitude. Elvo’s stomach felt cold and heavy. He looked toward Gerd Jemasze, who seemed interested only in the terrain ahead. Kurgech stood by the mast, looking vaguely off into the sky. Elvo began to feel a sweaty desperation; he had come on this trip for complicated reasons, but certainly not in search of death. With loose knees he crossed the cockpit to where Gerd Jemasze stood by the wheel. “Those are Srenki.”

“I supposed as much.”

“What are you going to do?”

Jemasze glanced over his shoulder at the racing black schooner. “Nothing, unless they molest us.”

“Isn’t that what they plan?” cried Elvo, his voice rather more shrill than he had intended.

“It looks that way.” Jemasze looked up at the sail. “We could probably outrun them straight downwind; their sails tend to blanket each other.”

“Then why don’t we sail downwind?”

“Because the river valley lies yonder.”

Through the binoculars Elvo inspected the black wagon. “They’re carrying guns—long rifles.”

“Hence I don’t shoot at them. They’d shoot back. Apparently they want to take us alive.”

Again Elvo studied the onrushing black schooner, until the gestures and grimaces of the Srenki affected him with nausea. In a stifled voice he asked: “What will they do with us?”

Jemasze shrugged. “They’re wearing red, which means they’ve taken vows of revenge. Somehow we’ve offended them, though I can’t imagine how or where or when.”

Elvo Glissam scanned the downwind terrain through the binoculars. He called out to Jemasze: “There’s a hill ahead! It’s too steep to cross and it slopes down into the river valley; we’ll have to come about!”

Jemasze demurred. “They’d have us in twenty seconds.”

“But—what can we do?”

“Sail. You stand by the reef-roller and make ready to shorten sail when I give you the signal.”

Elvo stared numbly at Jemasze. “Shorten sail?”

“Not until I give you the signal.”

Elvo hunched to the mast and stood by the reefing gear. The Srenki had narrowed the gap to a hundred yards; the three tall sails seemed to overhang the yawl. To Elvo’s amazement Jemasze slackened the sheets to slow the yawl and to allow the schooner to gain even more swiftly. The Srenki could now be perceived in detail. Three stood on the foredeck straining forward, their gaunt faces shadowed under the vertical pink sunlight… To Elvo’s consternation, Jemasze once again eased the sheets, allowing the Srenki to gain at an even faster rate. Elvo opened his mouth to scream a protest, then in blind desperation clamped his teeth together and turned away.

Ahead the ground began to slope down toward the river gorge on one hand, up to a round-topped bluff on the other; the yawl heeled and skidded. Behind, the black schooner came rushing, so close that Elvo could hear the hoarse calls of the crew. The slope steepened; the yawl tilted precariously; Elvo, peering over the gunwale, looked a sickening distance down, down, down into the river gorge; he squeezed shut his eyes and clung to the mast. The wind swept down the hillside; the yawl bounced crab-wise down-slope.

“Reef!” called Jemasze. Elvo cast a wild glance astern. The schooner, careening along the slope, was closing in fast; a Srenki on the foredeck hefted a grapnel, preparing to throw it into the cockpit of the yawl. “Reef!” Jemasze called in a voice of brass.

With numb fingers Elvo turned the handle and the mainsail rolled down the mast. A gust hit the yawl; the weather wheels lifted. Elvo’s stomach lifted with vertigo; he scrambled for the high side of the deck. The same gust struck the tall sails of the schooner and applied an inexorable leverage. As the weather wheels left the ground, the helmsman put down the helm to prevent a capsize; the schooner trundled wildly down-slope, out of control. The wheels bounded off rocks and bumps; the tall masts jerked and shivered; the sails bulged and flapped. On one of the wilder lurches the mizzen jibed, the helmsman spun the wheel; the schooner bounced off a boulder, flew off a ledge and toppled upside down into the river.

“Reef down!” bawled Jemasze. Elvo cranked the sail almost to invisibility. Jemasze cut on the auxiliary motor. At a careful pace the yawl negotiated the slope of the hill and reached the flatland beyond. Jemasze set the course into the northeast as before.

The yawl sailed across the deserted sarai, through an afternoon so peaceful that Elvo began to doubt the accuracy of his recollection; had the Srenki existed? Surreptitiously he studied Kurgech and Gerd Jemasze, one hardly more cryptic than the other.

The sun sank in a clear sky. The sails were lowered, the wheels locked, and camp made for the night out in the middle of the trackless sarai.

After a supper of potted meat, biscuit and Depot beer, the three men sat on the foredeck, leaning against the cuddy. Elvo could not restrain a question to Gerd Jemasze: “Did you plan that the Srenki schooner should be wrecked?”

Jemasze nodded. “I claim no great wisdom. With their narrow beam and three tall masts they obviously couldn’t reach along much of a slope. So I thought to tease them until they sailed themselves down to the river.”

Elvo gave a shaky chuckle. “Suppose they didn’t go over?”

“We’d have set them back some other way,” said Jemasze indifferently.

Elvo fell silent, reflecting that Jemasze’s confidence, while reassuring, perfectly typified that quality which Elvo found so exasperating… Elvo managed a sad chuckle. Jemasze felt competent to meet any challenge. He, Elvo, did not, and in consequence felt resentful: there was the truth of the matter. Elvo assuaged his abraded self-esteem with the reflection that here, at least, was a faculty in which he excelled Gerd Jemasze: he was capable of self-analysis. Gerd Jemasze had obviously never troubled to ponder his own psyche.

He turned to Kurgech and asked a question he never could have asked two weeks previously: “Is anyone on our trail now?”

Kurgech stared off across the twilight. “I feel no near threat. A dark mist hangs around the horizon, far away. Tonight we are safe.”

M
orning brought a brisk cool breeze and with all sail set, the yawl bowled across the gently heaving sarai: a landscape, thought Elvo, fresh and sweet as springtime. Bustards flew up from under the singing wheels; patches of pink and black periwinkles splotched the otherwise dun soum.

Halfway through the morning they sighted a fleet of brigantines sailing northward, sails straining to the wind: a signal that they had arrived at the third trail, as stipulated by Moffamides. A few minutes later they reached the trail itself, which to Elvo’s puzzlement led not north but definitely into the northwest. “We’ve come a hundred miles or more out of the way,” he complained to Jemasze. “If we had sailed north out from the Depot instead of northeast we might have saved ourselves a day’s sail.”

Jemasze gave somber agreement. “Moffamides evidently preferred that we come this route.”

The yawl overtook the house-wagons. Tousle-headed children hung on the rail and pointed; men stood up from the cockpit to stare; women came forth from the cabins, their expressions neither affable nor hostile. As usual Elvo essayed a friendly salute, which the Wind-runners ignored.

The trail descended from a region of great heaves and swales upon a flat plain reaching north beyond the horizon. At intervals sink-holes brimming with clear water irrigated fields and plots where grew melons, pulses, sweet vetch and cereals, each area guarded by its fiap.

Northwest across the plain sailed the yawl, sometimes in company with Wind-runner brigantines, more often alone. Long sunny days alternated with nights glittering with stars. Elvo often reflected that here was a life to be envied, a life without circumscription and no routine other than that imposed by the winds and the seasons. Perhaps the Wind-runners were the most sensible folk of all Koryphon, scudding as they did across the open places, with great clouds towering above and glorious sunsets to mark the end of each day.

On the fourth afternoon along the northwest trail, a dark smudge appeared on the horizon, which the binoculars revealed to be a forest of massive dark trees of a species Elvo had never seen before. “This must be Aluban forest,” said Jemasze. “We now proceed to a white pillar.”

Presently the pillar appeared—an object thirty feet high, constructed of a white lumpy stucco-like substance. At the base of the pillar an old man in a white cassock worked a pestle in a large iron mortar. The yawl coasted to a halt beside the pillar; the old man rose to his feet and, showing the clench-faced glare of a zealot, backed protectively against the white pillar. “Take care with your vehicle; this is the Great Bone; steer aside.”

Jemasze performed a courteous gesture to which the old man made no response. “We seek a certain Poliamides,” said Jemasze. “Can you direct us?”

Before the old man deigned to answer he dipped a brush in the mortar and applied a white wash to the pillar. Then he pointed the brush toward the forest and spoke in a harsh croaking voice: “Follow the trail; inquire at the hexagon.”

Jemasze released the brake; the yawl sailed past the Great Bone toward the Aluban.

At the forest’s edge Jemasze halted the wagon; the three men descended warily to the ground. The trees were the most ponderous growths Elvo had yet observed on Uaia: great twisted baulks the color and apparent density of black iron, with sprawling heavy branches and masses of pale gray and gray-green foliage. For several silent moments the three men stood peering into the forest, where the trail wound away among slanting sun-rays and black shadows. Listening, they heard only a dank stillness.

Kurgech said in a heavy voice: “We are expected.”

Elvo suddenly became aware that by some tacit understanding leadership of the group had transferred to Kurgech, who now muttered to Jemasze: “Let Elvo stay with the wagon; you and I will go forward.”

Elvo attempted an uneasy protest, but the words stuck in his throat. In an awkward attempt at facetiousness he said: “If you run into trouble, call out for help.”

Kurgech said: “There will be no trouble. No hot blood spills in this sacred forest.”

Jemasze said softly: “I fear Moffamides has played us a sour joke.”

“So much was clear from the first,” said Kurgech. “Still, it is better to play the game out, and to act in certitude.”

The two set off into the forest and immediately foliage closed out the sky; the trail became narrow and wound back and forth, past banks of moss and clusters of pale star-flowers; in and out of small glades, along dim aisles with pink rays slanting across the vistas. Kurgech moved with a peculiar delicacy, striding on the balls of his feet, turning his head first one way, then the other. Jemasze felt only stillness and peace; he apprehended no danger, nor did Kurgech’s attitude suggest more than wariness in the proximity of the unknown.

A glade carpeted with purple sedum opened before them; here stood a hexagonal structure of white stone, twice as tall as a man, open on all sides to the slow airs of the forest. In front of the structure a priest in a white cassock awaited them: a man frail and cold-faced. “Outkers,” said the priest, “you have come far, and you are welcome to share the peace of our forest Aluban.”

“We have come far indeed,” said Jemasze. “As you know we have come in search of Poliamides. Will you take us to him?”

“Certainly, if this is your wish. Come then.” The priest set off through the forest; Jemasze and Kurgech followed. The sun was low; the forest had become dim and dark. Looking up, Jemasze stopped short at the sight of a white object: a skeleton in the crotch of the tree. The priest said: “There sits Windmaster Boras Mael, who suspires his soul through the leaves, and who has given his right toe to the Great Bone.” He signaled them forward.

Jemasze looking aloft saw skeletons in many of the trees.

The priest, halting once more, spoke in a plangent voice: “Here all weary or troubled souls make their peace with Ahariszeio. Their transitory flesh is buried; their bones embrace the tree; the soul is absorbed and purified and suspired into the holy air of the Palga, to ride the blissful clouds.”

“And Poliamides?”

The priest pointed aloft. “There sits Poliamides.”

Jemasze and Kurgech studied the skeleton for a moment. Jemasze asked: “How did he die?”

“He went into an introspection so earnest that he neglected to eat or drink, and presently his condition became indistinguishable from death. The errors of his gross vitality are now forgotten and his soul breathes out from the leaves.”

With an edge in his voice, Jemasze asked: “Moffamides told you of our coming?”

Kurgech spoke in a low profound voice: “Speak truth!”

The priest replied: “Moffamides explained your presence, as was his duty.”

“Moffamides has used us poorly,” said Jemasze. “He has wantonly dealt us deceit. We have quite a score to settle with him.”

“Patience, my friends, patience and forbearance! Go back now to your Outker lands in humility rather than anger.”

“First we will deal with Moffamides.”

“Surely you have no grievance with Moffamides,” declared the priest. “You required the presence of Poliamides and behold! you have been vouchsafed your desire.”

“So we are sent forth on a week’s journey with useless fiaps to look at a set of bones? Moffamides will not long enjoy his triumph.”

The priest spoke gravely: “It might be wise to moderate your anger. Moffamides truly did you a beneficial service. If you take his intimations to heart, you will apprehend the sorry consequences of ignoble curiosity. Such knowledge is beyond value. Poliamides, for instance, so far overlooked propriety as to accept an Outker’s bribe. When he recognized his fault, he suffered a pang of guilt and became moribund.”